EXPANSION MODEL SPARKS A NEW VISION

San Antonio, Texas | 2013

Home to the San Antonio Scorpions NASL soccer franchise, Toyota Field was designed to not only be the flagship stadium of its league, but to continue to be home to the San Antonio Scorpions through potential future MLS expansion. The project came with design challenges that included a tight budget, unique site topography, a very small site footprint, and a short construction timeline. The most important challenge, however, was to create a venue with a capacity of only 8,000 seats that would still provide an intimate soccer experience and ultimately energize the brand new fan base of the city’s first professional soccer team.

Perforated metal facades, exposed steel structure and a soaring metal roof canopy adorn an architectural design that reflects the industrial heritage of the historic Longhorn Quarry in which the stadium resides. With its horseshoe configured stadium seating only 17’ away from the touchlines, beer garden seating only 15’ away from the south goal line, and an observation terrace overlooking the southwest corner flag, the atmosphere at Toyota Field is one of the most intimate in professional soccer.

During the initial design, PSD’s design team looked beyond the original vision and added expandability to the stadium’s capabilities, a feature that was not a part of the initial project scope. This created a new design challenge; how to strategically phase the stadium’s intimate seating, functions, and VIP amenities so the stadium would contain all of those features in every expansion phase. In addition, to help ensure cost effective expansions, the infrastructure and connectivity for future expansions was designed and built into the first phase. Toyota Field is designed to expand to 12,000 seats in Phase 2 and more than 18,000 seats in Phase 3 while adding exceptional features and amenities with each phase.

A NEW VISION

Toyota Field’s unique innovations have sparked a new vision for the second, third, and fourth division professional soccer league teams in North America with the stadium’s intimate soccer-specific design and its ability to expand with a fan base in phases. The inception of the stadium marks the beginning of an era where lower-division soccer franchises will have a cost effective avenue to build their own smaller soccer-specific stadium and expand to a brighter future. The successes of Toyota Field’s features were echoed at Toyota Field’s opening soccer match with NASL Commissioner Bill Peterson’s enthusiastic remarks that Toyota Field is “a model for the NASL”.